


The Revolutionary and The Rose

by ChewingAwayAtOurTruth



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Revolutionary Girl Utena Fusion, Coming of Age, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Gender Issues, Manipulation, Physical Abuse, Sexual assault of underage character in later chapters, Slow Burn, Unexplained Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:02:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23967328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChewingAwayAtOurTruth/pseuds/ChewingAwayAtOurTruth
Summary: Tobin Heath is just a normal girl who wants to be a prince. On the first day of high school, she plays hero and ends up engaged to the Rose Bride, Christen Press. It turns out saving someone is a lot more complicated than the fairy tales say.// Revolutionary Girl Utena AUOnce upon a time, there lived a sad little princess whose mother and father had died. Before the princess appeared a traveling prince on a white horse, who wrapped the princess up in a rose-scented embrace and kissed away her tears. Then he left her with a ring to remember him by. Perhaps it was an engagement ring.That was all well and good, but so impressed was she by him that the princess vowed to be a prince herself one day.But was that such a good idea?
Relationships: Tobin Heath/Christen Press
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	1. The Rose Bride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks. This fic is adapted from the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, which I watched for the first time last month while stuck at home and couldn't get out of my head. It's brilliant, quirky, and groundbreaking. For a story created in the 1990s, RGU has a lot to say about gender identity and growing up. 
> 
> I want to be up front with the trigger warnings though. This chapter describes instances of physical abuse. Later in the series, school-age characters are manipulated and abused. The show tends to not to fully depict this, and I have no interest in depicting graphic details either. I already plan to revise one storyline to avoid having to grapple with a side character's fetishization of incest. However, another major storyline deals with the same issue, and I want to write to preserve that plotline. I'll note any specific triggers in these start notes for each chapter. Please let me know if there are additional warnings you think I should include.
> 
> RGU tackles heavy topics under the guise of being a silly, magical-high-school anime. It's a show that exposes unhealthy relationships, especially those romanticized by other anime from the same period. Our media still has a tendency to fetishize stories about trauma, and RGU's rejection of this is one of my favorite things. RGU is not an real-life or educational depiction of how people respond to and heal from abuse and trauma. But it is an amazing criticism of how we tell stories about growing up, love, and abusive relationships.
> 
> Having said all that, the show can be pretty lighthearted and even campy at times. The whole series (subbed or dubbed) is available for free, from the copyright owner, on YouTube. If you think you want to stick it out, I promise there's a lot of fun to be had, especially in this first arc.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there lived a little princess who was very sad, for her mother and father had died. Before the princess appeared a traveling prince on a white horse. He had a regal bearing and a kind smile. The prince wrapped the princess up in a rose-scented embrace and kissed away her tears.

He said, “Little one, who bears up alone against such deep sorrow, never lose that strength or nobility, even when you grow up. We will meet again. I give you this ring to remember me by. It will lead you to me one day.” Perhaps it was an engagement ring.

That was all well and good, but so impressed was she by him that the princess vowed to be a prince herself one day.

But was that such a good idea?

*

The private academy outside Oneiro Village sprawls across several acres of verdant land. The school grounds are enclosed by white stone gates, and all the buildings, from the residences to the academic buildings to the dining halls, are made of the same white stone. Its pristine campus reflects a proud tradition of excellence in academics, athletics, and the arts for students from elementary to high school. Indeed, Oneiro Academy boasts a reputation for molding boys and girls into chivalrous, robust young gentlemen and refined, elegant young ladies.

On the first day of the new semester, one of those pretty (though perhaps not quite elegant) young ladies dawdles on the path to breakfast, playing with the pleated skirt of her uniform. “Come on, where are you?” she mutters, looking down the path. “We’re going to be late.”

“Hey Mari,” her classmates call out. “What are you daydreaming about?”

“I’m waiting for my boyfriend,” she explains.

“Your boyfriend?” one of the girls says blankly.

“Yeah, you know, my _boyfriend_ ,” Mari throws her head back proudly.

“Oh,” the girl replies. “Well, your _boyfriend_ ditched you. She left the dorm really early this morning.”

Mari’s jaw drops. “What? Toby!”

*

Tobin Heath strolls into the main high school academic hall, looking around for a staircase up to her second floor locker. This early in the morning, Tobin is confident that Vice Principal Pardee is still busy in her office organizing her riding crop collection.

“Tobin Heath!”

Tobin sighs as the Vice Principal marches towards her, looking as severe as ever in her pencil skirt and tight bun. “Good morning to you too,” she drawls, hoping that this is just a friendly, start-of-the-year check-in.

No such luck.

“Tobin Heath.” The vice principal jabs Tobin in the chest with her crop. “Tell me, do you intend to wear this ridiculous ensemble every day this year as well?”

Tobin feigns confusion, smoothing down her red-trimmed black blazer. “Ridiculous? I think all the boys in school look nice enough in their jackets.”

“Except you’re a girl! So why are you wearing a boy’s uniform?”

“Uh, let me check,” Tobin says, pulling out her dog-eared copy of the student handbook. She thumbs through the pages, brushing aside the few that catch on the large signet ring she wears on her left hand. “Well, there’s no rule that says I can’t wear a boys’ uniform.” She snaps the book shut. “I guess that settles it then. There’s no problem that I can see.” She flashes a wide smile and doffs her pink snapback at the vice principal for good measure.

“You little—are you determined to make a fool out of me this year too?”

“I mean…no?”

Another group of students burst into the hall, tossing a backpack full of books between them like an oversized bean bag. Vice Principal Pardee turns, and Tobin darts down an unfamiliar corridor, blurting out something about being late for class.

Otherwise, it’s not a bad first day of high school. After class, she strips down to her sports bra and shorts and tags into a pick-up soccer game with a group of guys on the back lawn. The older guys eye her skeptically, but one of her classmates from the middle school insists, “No, dude, we _need_ her on our team.”

Half an hour later, Tobin can hear a crowd of girls squealing from the windows as she baits one defender, nutmegs another, and takes off towards the goal. She slots the ball past the goalkeeper easily—no need to get too fancy with how close she is to the net.

“Fuck, man,” she hears the keeper say as he picks himself off the ground.

“Is she just going to keep stomping us all year?”

“She’s a freshman?”

Tobin jogs over to her water bottle and finds the usual crowd of her female classmates waiting.

“Tobin, Tobin! Do you need a towel? You can use mine!”

“No, take mine instead.”

“Sure thing,” Tobin says, accepting one of the many towels thrust in front of her. “It’s your turn today, right? Sorry, I don’t really remember where we left off before break.” She wipes off her face to a swell of giggles and admiration. Tobin can only shake her head and smile.

“I better go shower guys. I’ll see you around.”

“Bye, Tobin!”

“God, you’re so cool!”

The basketball team captain is waiting for her as she leaves the locker room. “You know, Heath, I saw you playing last year with the middle-schoolers. If you joined the basketball team this year, we’d crush regionals, no problem.”

“Gross,” Tobin says with an eyeroll. “I don’t want to end up all covered in boy sweat.”

“Come on,” he says, “you act like a boy anyways.”

Tobin looks up from the soccer ball that she’s bouncing between her feet to glare at him. “Screw you. Do you usually insult people you’re asking favors from?”

“Well, why do you wear that uniform?”

“To be a prince.”

“What?”

“I want to be a noble prince and save princesses,” Tobin says, picking up her ball so she can walk faster.

“What’s that even supposed to mean?” he asks.

Tobin brushes past him, irritated. She knows better to engage. No one understands anyway. She passes from the hallway into an enclosed courtyard. The smell of roses washes over her. There’s a greenhouse in the middle of the courtyard, and through the glass she sees a girl with warm skin watering flowers, dressed in the Oneiro Academy’s girl’s uniform in all its full puffy glory.

So familiar, Tobin thinks as her feet slow. Why does the scent of roses always remind me of the past?

She looks down at the ring on her left hand: the comforting white band topped with a pink stone.

When she glances up towards the greenhouse again, she sees the girl looking back at her through round, wire-rimmed glasses. Tobin flushes and hurries along. She must look like an idiot, stopped in the middle of the walkway to stare at a greenhouse.

Instead of heading to her locker to pick up her bag though, Tobin takes the staircase, two steps at a time, to the third floor and sticks her head out the window. Now she can look over the greenhouse from above. She takes off her snapback, letting the afternoon sun reach through her damp hair and down into her scalp while she breathes in the scent of roses.

_I’m going to be a prince._

An annoyed voice interrupts her trance. “What are you doing?” A guy, must be one of the upperclassmen, stands at the entryway to the greenhouse in an unusual white uniform. His unruly, long green hair hides his face.

The girl from the greenhouse steps outside, looking soft and delicate. From this angle, Tobin can see her dark hair is tied back tightly and strung through with purple roses.

The guy grabs one of her slim wrists. “I’ve been looking for you all day, babe,” he complains.

Of course, a lover’s quarrel. Some people are just too rude to keep their dirty laundry to themselves.

Tobin closes her eyes again and tries to lose herself again in the smell of roses. She’s high enough up, that she can shut out the details of the argument if she doesn’t pay attention.

She definitely hears the crack of skin against skin though and opens her eyes in time to see the girl’s face turn away, faintly red from the impact of an open palm.

Tobin’s heart leaps. “What the hell?” she says out loud.

The guy raises his right hand again, and Tobin almost flings herself out the third-story window.

But before the thought translates into action, another actor appears on the scene, an upperclassman in a similar white uniform, long red hair falling straight down to his waist, looking every inch the hero as grabs the forearm of the angry lover and pulls him a step back.

Tobin manages to loosen her own grip on the window frame and take a deep—

“There you are!” A body collides into Tobin from behind, nearly pushing her out the window. As she frantically tries to turn around, one arm circles around her neck while another covers her eyes. “That’s for ditching me this morning!” Mari shouts, locking her legs around Tobin piggyback-style, as Tobin doubles over.

“Mari!” she gasps.

“Deal with it!”

“Okay, okay,” Tobin groans, trying to adjust herself so her ribs are no longer digging into the metal edge of the window frame.

“Oh look,” Marianne whisper-shouts from Tobin’s back. “It’s Willowby!”

“Will-oh-bee?”

“You don’t know Willowby?”

“I’m guessing he’s popular or something?”

“What rock have you been under, Tobin?”

“I know the red-haired guy next to him,” Tobin says defensively. “That’s Casimir Davidson. Student Council president. He was on a flyer or something.”

“Yup. And the other guy is John Willowby, the vice-president. You can tell he’s on student council from his uniform.”

“Who’s the girl?” Tobin asks, watching as she turns away, hiding the swollen side of her face with one hand.

“That’s Christen Press.”

“Christen Press,” Tobin says, trying the name out on her tongue.

“She’s weird,” Mari says. “She just keeps to herself and looks after the roses. I think she might be in a few of our classes this semester.”

Tobin watches as Casimir leaves the courtyard, leaving Willowby and Christen Press standing alone.

“Are those two dating or something?”

“What?” Mari gasps. “Why would a guy like Willowby be interested with a girl like that?” she demands, outraged.

“Doesn’t seem like that great of a guy to me,” Tobin mutters. And it’s not like Christen Press is _un_ -attractive. Tobin thinks that she looks cute, in a shy sort of way.

“They’re probably just talking about student council stuff together, that’s all,” Mari sniffs.

“You seem awfully certain about that.” Tobin said, watching Mari’s face contort out of the corner of her eye. “Why do you know so much about Willowby and the student council anyway?”

She smirks as Mari splutters, turning bright red.

But then Mari grabs her around the neck again, tight with both arms. “Wow, are you jealous?” She lets out a sharp laugh. “Don’t worry, Toby! You’re the only one for me.”

Tobin chokes, trying to stand up and escape from Mari’s enthusiastic hug.

“You’re so much cooler than all of those guys anyways,” Mari coos planting a wet kiss on Tobin’s cheek.

“You’re such weirdo,” Tobin snorts, but she can’t help smiling when she finally manages to catch her breath.

*

“Short notice for a council meeting,” Willowby remarks as he strides out of the elevator onto the balcony that serves as the meeting room for the Student Council. Christen Press steps alongside him, utterly impassive.

He stops five or so feet from Casimir, tilting his head back to flick a stray lock out of his face. Casimir regards him solemnly.

A blue-haired boy perches on a white metal chair and dutifully scribbles into a green notebook. He looks up briefly and says, “Willowby, when I joined, I was told that the bearers of the Rose Seal are specially chosen.”

“And we wouldn’t want you to forget that there are rules,” a female voice adds.

Casimir squares his shoulders. “Willowby, your recent treatment of the Bride is causing us some concern—”

“Oh, really?” Willowby interrupts.

“Yes, really. True, you are currently engaged to her, but that doesn’t mean you’re free to treat her as you please.”

The two other Student Council members nod in agreement.

“Don’t abuse the Bride,” Casimir says, stepping towards Willowby. “The Student Council exists by the will of the End of the World. He won’t take it lightly if he finds out about this.”

“Mind your own business,” Willowby chuckles, jerking Christen towards him by her waist. She lets out a muted noise, and one of her hands flies towards his. But instead of pushing his hand off her hip, she rests just hers gently on top. “The Bride and I are just a pair of happy lovebirds. We’d prefer you keep your nose out of our business.”

“Lovebirds?” the blue-haired boy repeats, clicking the stopwatch he always palms in his left hand.

Any further objection falls aside when Christen opens her mouth. “For now… I am Lord Willowby’s Bride. I will do whatever Lord Willowby tells me.”

“See what a lovely couple we are?” Willowby asks breezily as he turns back towards the elevator, herding Christen along with him. “And if you’re so worried about the rules of the Rose Seal, then why don’t you follow them and duel me for the Bride, my fellow councilors?”

Casimir frowns. “Don’t forget a new Duelist is—”

“I look forward to whoever this new challenger is.” Laughing, Willowby lets the elevator door close and takes his prize elsewhere.

*

“It’s so pretty,” Mari says, holding Tobin’s hand still so she can inspect the ring while the two lie in the grass outside.

Satisfied, Mari lets go and sits up, tilting her face towards the sun. Tobin holds her left hand in front her own face. She slides her right thumb along the pink stone’s surface. The black lines that form the rose pattern on its surface are perfectly smooth to the touch. She traces her thumb along the edge of the stone, feeling no gap between the stone and the band itself.

“Is that our school crest?” Mari asks.

“They look similar,” Tobin says noncommittally. Part of her wants to tell Mari about how she decided to attend Oneiro Academy when she started receiving letters sealed with the same rose pattern three years ago. About the way seeing the school crest on Oneiro’s main gates for the first time had hit her in the chest, in the throat, behind her eyes.

“Who gave it to you?”

“A prince on a white horse.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll lead me to him one day.”

“What are you talking about?”

Tobin closes her eyes and drops her hand back to her forehead. “I remember someone telling me that.” She can’t quite see his face. “I was too young to really remember.”

“Oh, I know what you mean. When I was little, my mother used to tell me I was a princess from the Onion Kingdom.”

Tobin pops one eye open. “Well, you’ve got such a big round forehead, it kind of makes sense.”

Mari huffs and throws a handful of grass at Tobin, who spits it out of her mouth, before falling back to the ground in a fit of laughter.

“Let’s go eat dinner,” Tobin says after they’ve both caught their breath, rolling herself back onto her feet.

Mari wipes her hands off on her skirt and loops an arm into Tobin’s, tugging her happily along. “Come on! Aren’t you the hungry one?” she complains when Tobin doesn’t quite keep up with her skipping.

“No rush,” Tobin says, using her free hand to fix her snapback.

They hear the commotion even from outside the main hall. “Is something happening?” Tobin asks as they see a crowd of boys gathered around the bulletin board just inside. “It’s got to be too early for them to be announcing any tryouts.”

She walks over to the back of the crowd with Mari still clutching her bicep and shoulder. One of the guys near the front points at a piece of pink stationery tacked to the board.

“What’s that?” Tobin asks.

A guy nearby pipes up. “Someone’s put a love letter up on the board.”

“Listen to this,” the guy at the front hollers, leaning in to read. “ _I dance with you in my dreams, my darling Willowby. You smile at me, so gently and my heart pounds. I guess I’m an idiot to think that you would ever…_ ” He breaks into laughter before finishing the sentence.

“Wow, someone’s a real whore for Willowby,” another voice calls out.

“You’re such idiots,” Tobin snaps, pushing her way through the crowd and tearing the letter from the board. “You seriously have nothing better to do?”

“I’m just reading something that’s posted on the board for everyone to see,” the boy complains.

“A real man wouldn’t read something like this.” Tobin turns around, ready for an argument, ready to—and then she sees Mari through the crowd, staring at the note in Tobin’s hand and looking like she’s on the verge of tears. “Mari?”

Mari turns around and bolts, sobbing, back out into the fading sunlight of the early evening. Tobin charges after her, past several curious— and a few contemptuous—glances.

“Mari!” she calls again.

They run outside against the press of people coming in for dinner. Finally, out of breath, Mari collapses into the roots of an oak tree in the yard. Tobin halts a few feet away, uncertain.

“You…” She watches Mari wipe at her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. “You wrote this letter to Willowby?”

Mari nods.

“He’s a total asshole.”

Mari sobs.

“He’s not worth your time, you know?”

Mari shakes her head. “He’s too good for me. He’s too cool. And I’m just nobody.”

“That’s not true,” Tobin starts. But then Mari is making a noise that’s half-anger, half-grief and taking off back to her dorm.

They don’t eat dinner. And when Tobin waits for Mari to walk to breakfast together on the second day of school, Mari doesn’t show.

*

Just outside the door of the kendo team training room, Tobin pauses and runs through the list of facts she’s acquired about John Willowby. _Student council vice president, kendo team captain, absolute douchebag._ She clenches her fist around Mari’s letter and feels her prince’s ring press against her skin. She doesn’t know what she’s about to do. She doesn’t care.

She yanks the door open and sees Willowby facing the opposite wall in his kendo robes, _uwagi_ and _hakama_ , with his hair tied back in a ponytail. He holds a long bamboo practice sword with both hands.

“Only kendo team members allowed here when we’re not having a match,” he says without turning to face her.

She tosses the balled-up stationery at his feet. “How did this letter end up on the bulletin board?”

He rolls his head behind his shoulders. Briefly, when his ponytail swings to the side, she can see the edge of a smirk on his face. “I don’t know. I throw away lots of love letters. Maybe someone found it on the ground and posted it.”

“Why would you leave it where someone else could find it?”

“It’s none of your business what I do with my letters,” he says, still without turning to look at her. “I can do what I want.”

Tobin’s left hand is shaking.

“Oh right, I remember that desperate, I mean that _enthusiastic_ , letter. I decided the best use for it was as a little bit of comedy. Laughter is the best medicine, right?” He chuckles, taking a few practice chops with the bamboo sword.

Feeling almost woozy with anger, Tobin grabs a spare practice sword from the rack by the door and points it at his back. “I want a duel with you. After school. Today.”

He finally turns around, and Tobin gets a good look at his long, angular face for the first time. “Who do you think you are?” he asks, sounding offended and…curious. He looks at her for a long moment. Tobin feels a little embarrassed by her own dramatics. “Oh, I get it.” He smiles. “You’re the new challenger.”

“Challenger?”

“I accept. I’ll meet you after classes today. In the dueling arena forest.”

“The forest?” Tobin has seen it at a distance from the east-facing windows of the school. A thicket of trees atop a raised elliptical platform, higher than any building on the main campus. She’s always assumed it was some private garden for the school chairman or something. “No one’s allowed there.”

“Don’t tell me you’re chickening out now.”

Tobin scowls.

“Just go up to the gate. You’ll get in.”

“Fine.”

“Are you satisfied then?” Willowby asks. “I’d like to get some practice in.”

Tobin makes sure to slam the door on her way out.

Tobin sneaks lunch up into Mari’s dorm, but Mari barely picks at it. She tries to start a conversation, still mulling over whether to tell Mari about her fight with Willowby, but it’s hard to put together a dialogue when Mari—chatterbox, blabbermouth Mari—is stony-faced and sullen.

After her afternoon classes, Tobin sneaks a bamboo practice sword out from the training room, half-relieved and half-annoyed not to see Willowby there. She tries to look casual walking around the grounds with it, rehearsing a story about how she wanted try out for the kendo team. To her pleasant surprise, no nosy teachers or classmates stop to ask why she’s walking past the back lawns of school, towards the forbidden forest.

Up close, it turns out that the platform on which the forest sits is composed of a series of flat planes. She finds a ramp at the base that zig zags upwards to what she assumes is the gate. Instead, at the top, she encounters a white marble wall with the silhouette of a bird emerging from the top, several feet above her head.

The wall is composed of three panels, with the school’s rose crest engraved on the left and right. Emerging from the center of a spiral design on the middle panel, vertical, is a handle of some sort. Tobin drops her school bag on the ground and takes the handle in her left hand. She tries to turn it, counterclockwise, then clockwise. Nothing.

She shifts her grip lower on the lever hoping for more leverage and hears the sound of a water droplet echoing as it falls.

The ring on her finger turns ice cold. “What the—”

She lets go of the handle in surprise. A red rose glows from a hidden recess behind the lever.

Tobin hears water gushing behind her, but she can’t see where it’s coming from or where it’s going. The center panel rises, and what looks like several layers of metal gates glide apart. The marble bird lowers its wings, its form shifting into that of a large rose blossom.

An open chamber lies before her.

“Holy crap.”

The cold fades from her ring as a strange confidence seeps in her chest. She steps through the dark doorway.

To her mild surprise, the other side is well lit. In the distance, she can make out the silhouette of trees. But the marble path before her only continues a few yards before spiraling upwards around a thin vertical column.

_I am here._

She doesn’t know if the conviction comes from somewhere above her or somewhere within herself, but suddenly she is striding forward. Chanting starts in a language she can’t understand.

zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
shus-sei tou-roku sen-rei mei-bo  
shibo-ou tou-roku 

She begins the ascent up the spiral stairs, feeling almost weightless as her foot touches the first step.

As she climbs, she realizes that the column isn’t vertical at all, but instead leans inwards, going deeper (into the forest? into some unknown place?) as it rises.

zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
wa-ta-shi no tanjou  
zet-tai tanjou, mokushi-roku 

She approaches the level of the foliage, and the air around her darkens. Tobin is struck with the simultaneous compulsion to shiver and to open her arms wide and start sprinting forward. It feels like every hair on her arm is standing straight up. There’s no wind. Why is there no wind?

yami no sabaku ni sanba, uba  
kin no mek-ki no tougenk-you  
hiru to yoru to ga gyaku-ma-wari  
toki no mek-ki no shitsu-ra-ku-en 

The dread sets in as she walks through the darkness. Higher, still higher. Tobin can no longer see her feet beneath her, relying on the countless turns she’s already made around the column to guide her.

She can’t stop.

She’s walking into her grave, but she just can’t stop. If she stops now, there will be nothing.

Her ring glows, magenta-pink in the darkness. That must be where her hand is, but in this darkness, the ring might as well be an entity of its own, bobbing alongside her in the void.

sodomu no yami, hikari no yami  
kanata no yami, hatenaki yami  
zet-tai un-mei mokushiroku  
zet-tai un-mei mokushiya-mi mokushiroku 

A burst of light. It blinds her as much as the darkness did, but she must keep walking.

Then she can see again. She’s in the sky itself, surrounded by clouds and blue.

The chanting becomes loud and frantic. Almost unbearable.

mokushikushimoshimokukumoshi 

Before her, the never-ending steps end in an archway.

moshikushikumomokushikushimo 

Tobin crosses to the other side and steps onto a smooth expanse. Larger than a soccer field. Made out of some shining opaque material. Stainless steel? Light?

shimokukumoshimoshikushikumo 

The spires of a castle pierce down towards her, glowing with halos of blinding color. She reaches out thinking that the castle must be right above her. No, it’s further away than that, maybe much further away. But its size and brightness make it seem like she might be able to touch it if she just rose up on her toes.

How can a castle float upside down in the air like that? For a crazy moment, Tobin wonders if all starlight comes from this castle in the sky.

Willowby’s shoes click as he walks across the expanse towards her. He’s dressed once more in his white uniform, accented in green, with a gold aiguillette running across his right breast. “You’ve never seen the castle before,” he says.

“What is that thing? You can’t see it from outside the forest.”

“It’s a just a mirage,” he says lightly. “Pretend it’s a trick of the light.”

Tobin looks back up at the spires. She doesn’t ever want to un-see them. A pang of loss echoes in her chest.

“Never mind that,” Willowby says. “I’m surprised that someone who isn’t on the Student Council bears the Rose Seal.”

“The Rose Seal?” Tobin tears her eyes away from the castle.

“Like mine.” Willowby holds up his right hand. A white band with a pink stone sits on his ring finger.

“Where did you—”

“Chrissy, prepare us!”

Another figure glides into Tobin’s peripheral vision. Christen Press in a long red gown that falls to the floor. Royal purple roses sown in her hair as before, but now enclosed by a gold tiara. Gold epaulettes with green tassels fall from her shoulders. She carries two roses, green and white in front of her chest.

Tobin forgets to breathe. Her head feels fuzzy.

Christen turns and places the green rose in Willowby’s breast pocket. Then she approaches Tobin, a vacant look in her grey-green eyes.

“Press. Christen. What are you doing here?”

“Of course, she’s here,” Willowby scoffs. “It’s the Bride’s place.”

“Bride?” Before she can ask anything else, Tobin realizes that Christen is reaching out, her hand is brushing, well it shouldn’t matter, they’re both girls, so it shouldn’t matter. She’s so close that Tobin can feel her breathing, and she’s putting the white rose into the left breast pocket of Tobin’s blazer.

The scent of the rose—of Christen?—it smells like a cool, gentle kiss on each eyelid. Yeah, that’s exactly what it smells like.

Christen withdraws her hands. Looking at some point beyond Tobin’s shoulder, she says, “If the rose is knocked off your chest, you lose the duel.”

“Huh?” Tobin says, feeling like she’s just been jumped on by twenty Maris and then kicked in the stomach for good measure.

“Good luck,” Christen says. And for the first time, Tobin sees the girl press her lips into a smile. It’s just a tilted flat line, but it makes Tobin want to lean in close.

“Chrissy!” Willowby storms forward. He grabs Christen by the collar of her dress, strikes her with an open palm and lets her fall to her knees.

The anger sleeping in Tobin’s chest hisses to life as she drops into a crouch and puts a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“How dare you, Chrissy? You’re the Rose Bride! That means you belong to me. What do you think you’re doing, wishing her good luck?”

Christen’s gaze falls to the ground as she cups her face with one hand. “Please forgive me, Lord Willowby.”

Tobin’s anger whirls around, baring its teeth in confusion. “Are you nuts?” She tries to turn Christen by her shoulders so she can see her face properly. “Why would you take that from this asshole?”

Christen’s face is like pool of water, still and colorless, momentarily disturbed by the violence around her, but always smoothing itself back into a neutral state. “Because Lord Willowby is the current champion Duelist. I have to do whatever he wants me to.” 

“What do you mean?” Tobin’s eyes dart from Christen to Willowby and back again. “I thought you were his girlfriend?”

Willowby wipes his hand on his shirt and blows a stray strand of hair from his face. Having apparently satisfied his ego, he calls out, “Come on. Let’s start already.” He walks away towards a space on the floor where two red lines intersect.

Tobin realizes that on the floor is the symmetrical design of a rose. This whole area is an arena in the sky, enclosed by gray stone parapets.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I just have to beat him, right?”

She rises to her feet, her hand lingering on Christen’s shoulder before she walks to a position across from Willowby, with Christen Press off to the side.

When Tobin turns around, she sees Press with her hands in the middle of her chest.

“Rose of the noble castle,” she chants. An orb of white light, like a miniature of one of the lights from the castle above, appears between the tips of Christen’s fingers. It swells. All the air rushes towards her, as though she is the center of a vortex. Tobin’s hair whips towards the light, and Christen’s red gown flares out. “Power of Dios that sleeps within me, heed your master and come forth.”

Everything goes black except for the light hovering before Christen’s chest.

She begins to lean back, dropping her hands to her side, until her chest, the orb, is fully exposed. Tobin wants to run over and catch her before she falls, wants to reach in—

But then Willowby appears next to Christen, stark in the white light, one arm wrapped around Christen’s waist, his eyes closed as though in rapture.

Tobin wants to scream, but she can’t move.

The hilt of a sword appears in the light. Willowby wraps his fingers around the grip, and yanks the sword free, shouting “Grant me the power to bring the world to revolution!”

What kind of crazy game is this? Tobin wonders.

Distantly, bells begin to ring.

Willowby lunges forward and Tobin dodges his first blow, swinging instinctively back at him. He bats her strike away and steps towards her again.

“You’re pretty good,” he taunts, “for a girl.”

Tobin is on the soccer field again: _what’s that girl doing here?_

Ignore them, she tells herself. Play your game.

“Playing prince?” Willowby continues as he closes the gap between them again. “Trying to save the damsel in distress?” His next slash is quick but sloppy, and Tobin doesn’t bother trying to get her sword between them.

He’s six inches taller than her, maybe more. She can’t keep backing off. She has to stay in close, or he’ll use his reach to wear her down, and she’ll never even be a threat.

He takes another overhand chop at her, which she blocks, but the force from the blow knocks her backwards to the ground. When she raises the practice sword again, she realizes two-thirds of it has been cleaved clean off.

“Wait, are you using a real sword?”

He laughs. “I’m surprised. What fool would challenge the Sword of Dios with a bamboo sword?”

“The Sword of Dios?”

“You don’t even know about the Sword of Dios? Who are you?” He shakes his head. “Whatever. At least you’re more interesting than I thought.”

It must be someone sort of trick sword that he’s sharpened, Tobin decides. This guy is crazy. She scrambles upright as he steps towards her. “This duel isn’t over!”

“True. If you like, I’m happy to clip that rose from your chest with a single stroke.” He slides a finger along the flat of his blade. “A consolation prize for being _so_ brave. The little prince on a white horse, galloping in to save her princess,” he jeers.

_Little one. Sorrow. Strength. Nobility. Up._

Tobin levels her splintered weapon at him, as though it is a perfect blade, and charges headlong at him.

Willowby looks startled, but then his face hardens and he swings.

Christen’s makes a noise. Maybe. Tobin isn’t sure. She can only hear the scent of the rose pounding in her ears.

A burst of green petals flies into the air. Tobin squares up against a stunned Willowby, confident that the rose on her own chest is untouched.

“What? How?” He falls onto his ass and looks up at Christen. “I- I- can’t lose to—”

Christen smiles at him placidly. “You’ll be okay, John. Farewell.” She turns the smile towards Tobin, a toothy smile that catches the corners of her eyes. The petals flutter around her, more than could ever fall from a single blossom. Tobin loses sight of her, and when the petals dissipate, she’s gone.

Bells ring in the distance. Casimir Davidson lowers a pair of binoculars. “What a girl,” he says to himself.

*

Tobin winds her way down the spiral stairs, drained of anger, still trying to process the events of her day. By the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs and exits the threshold of the forest, she’s just about decided that she must have made the whole thing up. She picks up her schoolbag from where she left it at the gate, slings it over her right shoulder.

From behind a stone column, Christen Press steps out, clad in the Oneiro Academy girls’ uniform.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Lord Tobin. I am the Rose Bride. From this day forward, I belong to you.”

“Uh, what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. This has been a fun project for me to flex my creative writing skills. I haven't really done much writing for fun in over a year. 
> 
> I thought TCs' personas slotted nicely into the archetypes of Utena and Anthy. I won't be using other real names, because the story has its dark moments, and I don't want to attach real names to that. There are some Easter eggs in the name swaps I made though, so cheers if you can guess them.
> 
> Anyhow, if anyone else around here has seen RGU and gone into a spiral, I'd be super pumped to talk about it. I'm still mulling over how to sort out the second arc in the series and some extra brainpower would be appreciated.


	2. For Whom the Rose Smiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tea, talks, and choices made.

Your dorm assignment for this academic year has changed. Please move your belongings to your new room this afternoon. 

Room assignment: East Dorm, Room 2C 

Roommates: ______ 

Puzzled, Tobin shoves the note into her backpack and hurries downstairs. She’s overslept her alarm by thirty minutes and now she’s probably too late to sneak into Mari’s dorm and try to talk her out of bed.

Deciding to forgo breakfast for the day, she hits the path to her first class at a light jog.

“Good morning, Tobin!” one of her female classmates calls out, then giggles.

“Morning!” Tobin says politely, chugging along. Then she realizes that the girl lives in Mari’s dorm. “Wait!” She spins around. “Did you see Mari earlier?”

“Yeah. I saw her at breakfast. She was reading a book.”

“Mari? Reading?”

“I know, right?”

“Well, thanks! See you around!” And with that, Tobin takes off for her first class with renewed vigor.

Behind her, she hears the girl squeal, “Oh my god, she’s so cool.”

Tobin rushes into class with several minutes to spare before the bell rings. Mari is sitting at her desk near the front of the room, sure enough, with her nose buried in a thick book.

“Hey Mari!” Tobin says with as much cheerful enthusiasm as she can muster. “Have you got a new hobby or something?”

Mari doesn’t look up or respond.

“Uh, must be a really good book! What is it?”

Mari flips another page.

Sighing helplessly, Tobin starts towards her seat two rows back.

Mari shuts her book with a resounding snap and holds it above her head so that Tobin can read the cover for herself. “Magnolia Waltz.”

“Oh?” Tobin says uneasily to the back of Mari’s head.

“It is. The girl, she’s always— _always_ —loved this guy. But after he rejects her, well, the next day she just gets over it. And another man shows up, and she ends up with him instead.”

“Oh,” Tobin repeats. She places a hand on Mari’s shoulder.

“When I read this before, I thought it was the stupidest plot—like who does that?”

“You know—”

“But I just read it again last night and I think it’s the best thing ever!” Mari dances in her seat and hugs the book tightly to her chest.

“Oh. _Oh_ ,” Tobin says, feeling like she’s getting whiplash. “I’m glad to hear that?”

Laughing, Mari springs from her chair and throws herself around Tobin’s neck, dangling from her arms like a monkey. “I _told_ you, Toby, you’re my one true love!” Tobin tries to set her friend back down, but somehow Mari ends up latched onto her back. “Toby! I belong to you, Toby!”

“Mari, please,” Tobin gasps, getting a hand between Mari’s arm and her throat, “enough with the one-true-love stuff.”

“Why though?” Mari whines.

Christen Press quietly shuffles into the classroom with a stack of books tucked under one arm. She presses her lips into that careful flat smile and looks at Tobin through her lashes.

Tobin doesn’t manage another word after that.

*

A chick that cannot break its egg’s shell will die without being born.

We are the chick.

The world is our egg.

If we cannot crack the world’s shell, we will die without being born.

Smash the world’s shell for the revolution of the world!

On their balcony overlooking the school, the Student Council sit in white metal chairs around matching circular table, silently playing cards until Casimir tosses a cream-colored envelope sealed with a rose onto the pile. “I received an update from the End of the World this morning.”

“Same,” says the girl with orange curls seated to his right. “Someone outside the Student Council is messing around in the duels.”

“Does that mean she’s also getting letters?” asks the blue-haired boy occupying the final chair.

“Who knows?” Casimir replies, plucking a card from the girl’s hand. “But she bears the Rose Seal. I saw it with my own eyes.”

The girl appears undisturbed by the loss of her card. “And who is this mystery challenger?”

“Tobin Heath,” the boy answers without looking up from his hand. “She’s a really popular freshman.”

Casimir leans back in his chair, tossing his hair back and closing his eyes. “Such a regal and lovely girl. I watched her last night when she was dueling Willowby.”

“And here I thought you were just an exhibitionist, not a voyeur as well,” the girl remarks flatly.

Casimir inhales deeply. “She was…exceptional. And unexpected.”

“Keep it in your pants,” the girl says. “A random girl shows up out of nowhere and starts dueling? If she sticks around—”

“What will you do about it?” Casimir arches an eyebrow. “Drop out of the Duels?” He glances down at his hands and tosses a pair of Jokers onto the pile. “I win the round.”

“Winning isn’t everything,” says the other boy automatically.

“I lost on purpose,” says the girl.

They shuffle and start dealing for another round.

“Our letters are one-way communications from the End of the World,” says Casimir. “We’re free to follow them as we see fit. Or to depart.”

“Would you really drop out, Miss Heather?” the blue-haired boy asks. “The castle and everything?”

The girl, Heather, mulls over her cards carefully. “… No. After seeing that castle… I can’t give up now.”

“Indeed. The letters are clear. The one who secures the Rose Bride’s hand in the Duels will eventually enter the castle and gain the power to revolutionize the world.” He plays the opening set of cards to their new round, a pair of threes. “Winner takes all.”

The boy scribbles in his green notebook, clicking his stopwatch. Heather puts her elbow on the table and rests her chin on the backs of her hands and stares contemplatively at the pile of cards.

*

Mari swings their joined hand in wide arcs as they trek across campus from Tobin’s old dorm to her new one. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t put best friends like us in the same dorm. The universe is so cruel!”

“Nothing we can do about it,” Tobin says. “The student council gets the final word on rooms.”

Displaced from her usual position on Tobin’s back by a large pack containing most of Tobin’s worldly possessions, Mari settles for resting her head plaintively on Tobin’s shoulder and pouting.

“Besides,” Tobin adds, “I’m pumped to get a single. It’ll be totally sweet, I’m sure.”

“But the East Dorm’s been empty for like 10 years.” Mari releases Tobin and skips ahead.

“Ten years?”

“Yeah!” Mari blows a raspberry over her shoulder. “I bet that cleaning that it up by yourself will be totally sweet for total stud Tobin Heath. Anyway, you can come visit me when you get scared, all alone in that single in your haunted house.” She flutters her eyelashes dramatically.

“Sure thing, loser,” Tobin replies with an eyeroll.

“Bye!” M shouts as she prances off.

The East Dorm is a pretty, two-story building built out of the same white stone as the rest of the school and surrounded by a black metal gate. Tobin thinks it looks perfectly fine and decidedly un-haunted. She lugs her belongings up the front steps and pushes open the front door with her foot.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“I’m Tobin Heath,” she ends up telling an empty front desk.

She puts down her stuff and walks around the first floor, poking her head into hallway closets and behind shower curtains. She finds the dining room and bathrooms, but no other people.

“Is anyone else here?” she asks the lobby chandelier.

Not sure what else to do, she hoists her bags up to the second floor and kicks open the door to her room.

A dust cloud mushrooms in her face. The light spilling in from the hallway reveals a collapsed wooden desk along the left wall and a panel dangling sadly from the ceiling by a cable.

Squeak. A grey rat sits on its hind legs just inside the doorway, blinking and sniffing the air.

Tobin slams the door shut and bangs her head against the door frame. It really might have been ten years since anyone lived here, she thinks.

She looks forlornly at the nameplate beside the door, hoping she might have gotten the wrong room. Her name, TOBIN HEATH, mocks her in heavy serif print.

“Ugh.” After pounding her forehead against the wall a couple extra times, Tobin takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders. Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe she just overreacted. It’s not like she’s a princess who need a fancy bed or anything. She can run down to admin and ask to transfer tomorrow morning. “I can do this,” she mutters to herself, swinging the door open again.

The room is bright and clean with a tile floor that shines in the sunlight leaking through the two windows on the far wall. A pink wooden tea table sits on a purple rug in the center of the room. Two student desks line the left wall and a bunk bed set occupies the right.

“Huh?” Tobin blinks.

Christen Press organizes books on one of the desks, her hair wrapped up in a white cloth. She looks up and offers Tobin a flat, tilted smile. “Sorry, Lord Tobin. I’m almost done.”

“What are you doing here? How did—”

“We’ll be living together from now on. How are you?”

“But this is a single…” Tobin leans back out and checks the nameplate. TOBIN HEATH, the plate still reads. But underneath that, in a permanent marker rectangle, is the handwritten name Christen Press. “…right?”

She looks back into the room. Two desks and a bunk bed set. It must be a double after all. Maybe there was just a misprint on her assignment slip.

The ache in her shoulders finally prompts her to walk over to the free desk and unload her textbooks all over it.

“Weird coincidence, huh, Press?” Tobin says, “Us getting put together in the same room.”

Christen says nothing, simply pulling on a pair of rubber gloves and dipping a cloth into a sudsy bucket.

“You really cleaned this place up.” Tobin continues. “Sorry you had to do it yourself.” The lower bunk is already neatly made, so Tobin climbs up the ladder and dumps out her bed sheets on the top bunk. She can worry about making her bed later.

“I wanted to get it done by tonight.”

“That’s a lot for an afternoon.”

“This isn’t a coincidence,” Christen says abruptly. She stands up and begins to clean the mirror on the dresser between their two desks with a fresh rag. “It’s the rules of the Rose Seal.”

The duffel bag Tobin is trying to shove into the closet tumbles back out and smacks her in the face.

“It’s because I’m the Rose Bride,” Christen continues, unfazed. “I must be engaged whoever wins the duel.” She starts again on the floor tiles.

“About that…” Tobin gets on her knees and watches Christen from under the tea table, trying to read her face. “Are you serious about all this…stuff?”

“Let’s have some tea.”

As Christen brews a pot of tea and sets out a pretty porcelain tea set, Tobin bounces restlessly between the desks and the windows, torn between wanting to help and not wanting to interfere. Once she’s settled cross-legged at the tea table, she can’t even wait to pick up her cup before blurting out, “Alright, what’s with the mirage castle and the trick sword?”

“They are mysteries.”

“Mysteries? If you don’t even know what they are, why are you doing all this—whatever this is?”

The tea cup stops just before it touches Christen’s lips. She lowers it and studies Tobin through her steam-fogged glasses.

“Why do you always dress like a boy, Lord Tobin?”

“This?” Tobin pulls self-consciously at the hem of her jacket. “Because I like to, I guess.”

“Well, that’s my answer,” Christen says, her voice a little sharp. She sips at her tea primly with her eyes closed. “Is our presence in this room a problem?”

“No, not at all, but…” Tobin wipes her sweaty palms on her shorts before picking up her tea cup and stirring. “Wait, who’s ‘our’?”

From behind the tea kettle, a dusky little gerbil wriggles out, holding a piece of cookie in his forepaws.

“Let me introduce you,” Christen says. “This is my friend, Toca.”

Toca rapidly gobbles up what remains of the cookie.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to have pets.”

“He’s not a pet. He’s my friend.”

The gerbil sniffs curiously at Tobin’s tea cup. “Here,” Tobin says, filling a sugar spoon with some tea.

A little pink tongue laps eagerly at the hot liquid. Tobin can’t help but chuckle. “How are you, Toca?” She scratches the top of his head with the tips of two fingers.

She looks up and catches Christen beaming. “He’s usually much shyer than this.”

Tobin blushes.

“He must really like you, Lord Tobin.”

Tobin rubs the back of her neck uncomfortably. “Look, Press, can you not call me ‘lord’, please? It’s really weird.”

“But we’re engaged, Lord Tobin.”

“Not this again.”

“We are though.”

“We’re not,” Tobin says before trying to change the subject. “That Willowby guy was wearing a ring just like this one.” She holds her left hand out for Christen to see. “Do you know what it is?”

“All members of the Student Council wear them. It’s a Rose Seal. It marks the bearer as a Duelist.”

A Rose Seal? Tobin wonders. She always thought of her ring as something special, given to her by her prince. The fact that there are identical rings out there unsettles her. Is she a ‘Duelist’ now? All she wanted was to be a prince.

“Now that you’re the champion Duelist, the other bearers of the Rose Seal will come to challenge you,” Christen informs her.

“They want to fight me?” Tobin asks, alarmed. “That guy last night was using a real sword!”

Christen sips her tea placidly.

“That’s so dumb,” Tobin insists her voice rising. “I’m not going to pick meaningless fights with the student council.”

“As long as you are engaged to me, Lord Tobin, the other Duelists will seek you out.”

*

Willowby swings his practice sword in the direction of the opened door, then lowers it. “I see it’s you, Mr. President.”

“Am I disturbing you, Mr. Vice President?” Casimir asks with mock politeness.

“No, you’re generally welcome in my domain.”

“Is our illustrious captain preparing to challenge the freshman girl to another duel?”

“Of course.” Willowby takes a series of quick chops, stepping across the wooden floor. “The power to revolutionize the world belongs to me.” His grip tightens on the sword hilt. “That girl’s engagement to the Rose Bride is a mistake.”

“I see no mistake. Tobin Heath won the Duel and, accordingly, the hand of the Rose Bride.”

Willowby swings viciously in Casimir’s direction, knowing that the Student Council president is just out of his weapon’s reach. “She belongs to me. She’s meant to be mine, forever,” he says shakily. “It’s written in our exchange diary.”

“You keep an exchange diary?”

*

Tobin sits at one end of a long, empty table where two places have been set. The steaming hot food is making her stomach growl, but she keeps herself from picking at the chicken out of politeness. The rest of the dining room is empty except for another unused dining table. Tobin isn’t really sure how their dinner arrived in the first place. In her exploration of her new home, she didn’t discover anything more than a limited student kitchen on the first floor. Only the aroma of fresh food led her to the dining room on time for dinner.

A series of squeaks catches her attention as Toca comes scrabbling into the kitchen.

“Hey buddy.”

The gerbil scrambles up Tobin’s chair leg, chittering wildly.

Tobin grins at him. “Can you tell Christen to hurry up? I’m kinda hungry, and I’m pretty sure you and I can polish off everything here without her if we’re left alone for too long.”

Tobin’s eyebrows rise as Toca grips a metal fork in front paws and waves it around.

“Geez. You’ve got some serious upper body strength there, bud.”

Toca squeaks indignantly, sinking his teeth into the sleeve of Tobin’s blazer and tugging her towards the door. Faintly, raised voices drift in from outdoors.

“Is something wrong?” She scoops Toca up and sticks him in her pocket and heads towards the front door.

“Why, Chrissy? Why won’t you do what I’m telling you?” Tobin’s hackles rise at the sound of Willowby’s whining voice.

“I’m sorry, Willowby. I’m engaged to Lord Tobin now.” When she opens the front door, she sees Christen and Willowby, standing just outside the gate on the main path.

“But didn’t you devote yourself entirely to me when we were engaged?” He steps closer to her, puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Yes, but that’s in the past now,” Christen responds. “Our engagement is over. Please, forget me.”

He lets go of her shoulders and exhales. Then anger flashes across his face and he grabs her by the upper arm, pulling her almost off her feet. “You’re shameless!” he spits in her face. “You know that? You’re a total disgrace.” He flings her to the ground.

“You’re the disgrace!” Tobin seethes as skids to a stop by Christen.

“Good timing,” he says coolly. “I let my guard down last night.”

Ignoring him, Tobin throws an arm around Christen, who’s cradling one elbow. Her normally placid face is pulled tight around the edges, a hint of helpless anger at the corner of her eyes.

“Let’s settle this once and for all,” Willowby asks, “let our blades determine who possesses the Rose Bride?” Toca scurries out of Tobin’s pocket and nips at his ankles, but Willowby simply kicks him aside. “I want a rematch in the arena tomorrow, after class.”

Tobin glares at him as she lifts Christen back onto her feet, keeping her left arm wrapped around the other girl’s body and turning them to keep herself between Christen and Willowby. “This is ridiculous! I’m not fighting another meaningless duel. I only fought you yesterday because of what you did to Mari. I don’t care about this Rose Bride garbage.”

“Well I do!” he says, suddenly petulant. “If you’re engaged to the Rose Bride, you can’t refuse. Those who oppose the Student Council vanish from this campus! The school regulations make that clear.”

A day ago, Tobin would have laughed. But now she looks from Willowby to the East Dorm building. The Student Council must have reassigned her to this weird building with transforming rooms and mysteriously appearing food. Could they get her expelled? She can’t leave. She has to find her prince here.

“Fine. I accept your challenge. See you after class in the arena.”

“Hmph,” Willowby sneers, then turns back towards the setting sun.

“Didn’t you say that you weren’t going to fight any more duels?” Christen asks as they watch his form shrinking.

“No choice, I guess. Who knows what the student council’s actually capable of?” She can feel Christen’s eyes shift over to her face and plasters on an upbeat smile. “Well, I’ll just lose on purpose. No big deal.”

For a moment, Tobin wonders if she’s said something wrong.

“Of course, do as you will.”

She’s a little embarrassed when she glances over to meet Christen’s green-grey eyes and discovers that Christen is looking down at Toca, who scrambles over their shoes.

“How’s your elbow?”

“I’m fine.”

After a long moment of watching Christen watch a gerbil, Tobin asks “Should we go inside?”

“Let’s.”

They sit down to dinner in silence. The clink of silverware is torture. Then, Tobin’s stomach growls—very audibly—and she catches Christen’s lips twitching. Tobin grins at her. “Alright Press, tell me something about yourself.”

“I’m the Rose Bride,” Christen says, her face flattening as she carefully cuts up a piece of chicken.

“Seriously?”

Christen chews her food impassively.

“Tell me some roommate stuff then. I guess you’re pretty neat?”

“I want you to be comfortable.”

“I don’t need a maid,” Tobin complains. Christen looks pointedly down towards Tobin’s table setting. Scoffing, Tobin brushes a dusting of crumbs off the tablecloth. “Come here, Toca, you can clean up after me instead.” She wipes her hands off on her shorts and directs her attention back towards Christen. “What’s your sleep schedule?”

“I’m quiet, and I don’t need much sleep. You can wake me up whenever.”

“Should I just wipe my shoes on your bed while I’m at it?”

“You can do anything you like, Lord Tobin.”

Tobin rubs her face. “Anything except get you to stop calling me that stupid name.”

Christen peers at her over her glasses, the corners of her eyes crinkling, but doesn’t say anything. Tobin’s face heats up. Maybe Christen is yanking her chain a little. She tries to be annoyed by it.

“What do you like? Do you play any sports?”

“I do not.”

“Do you like gardening then? I always see you in the greenhouse.”

“It’s unclear to me what you hope to gain by this line of questioning, Lord Tobin. Given your reluctance to participate in the Duels, my habits are none of your concern. I won’t be your Bride for much longer.”

It’s the longest series of words she’s ever heard Christen say and it makes Tobin realize that she likes the sound of Christen’s voice. She likes how it lilts a little higher than her own, how it bobs in the front of Christen’s mouth, likes how it sounds like she could reach out and pluck it with just two fingers.

“Okay, but you can be my friend, right?”

Christen’s silverware hovers undecidedly over her plate. “You want to be friends with me?” she asks slowly.

“Sure.”

Christen studies her food, as if deciding how precisely she should go about dividing it up into properly-sized forkfuls.

“Don’t you like me?” Tobin tries, teasing.

“I…” Christen starts carefully, “…think you are an intriguing person.”

Tobin laughs so hard at the thought of Christen Press—of all people—being intrigued her that she nearly chokes on her food.

*

At the gate to the forest, Tobin grasps the handle once more and hears the sound of a water droplet leap to her ring from within the hidden recess. The band grows cold. Water rushes somewhere unseen.

“Will you be there?” she asked Christen in the dark from the top bunk, heart pounding in her chest.

“Of course, I am the Rose Bride.”

Tobin steps through the opened gate, and the chanting begins.

zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
shus-sei tou-roku sen-rei mei-bo  
shibo-ou tou-roku 

Should we meet up after class then? We can go together.

No, the Duelist ascends to the arena alone.

zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
zet-tai un-mei moku-shiroku  
wa-ta-shi no tanjou  
zet-tai tanjou, mokushi-roku 

Is that another one of your rules? How do you even get there? Is there another entrance?

I am there when it is time.

yami no sabaku ni sanba, uba  
kin no mek-ki no tougenk-you  
hiru to yoru to ga gyaku-ma-wari  
toki no mek-ki no shitsu-ra-ku-en 

You’re really annoying when dodge my questions.

I’m sorry, Lord Tobin. I’ve told you what I can.

sodomu no yami, hikari no yami  
kanata no yami ,hatenaki yami  
zet-tai un-mei mokushiroku  
zet-tai un-mei mokushiya-mi mokushiroku 

Why don’t you want to climb the stairs alone?

I thought you fell asleep.

Tobin, what’s keeping you up?

mokushikushimoshimokukumoshi 

I’m just—it was a little scary last night. I always thought that when it was time for me to be a prince, I would be excited. But last night, I didn’t feel ready at all.

moshikushikumomokushikushimo 

Tobin, I promise, when you reach the castle, I’ll be waiting for you.

shimokukumoshimoshikushikumo 

Tobin reaches the final step. Through the archway, she sees Christen standing in the middle of the arena in her red gown from the night before. She gestures solemnly as Tobin passes under the arch.

A gold aiguillette appears across the right side of Tobin’s chest. Red epaulettes with white tassels form across her shoulders, and a trim of white satin materializes along the hem of her blazer. Tobin can feel her whole body square up. The dark of the forest below clears from her mind. She feels like she’s been touched by something powerful, like she is something powerful.

She wants to thank Christen, but Christen gazes out across the arena, an emotionless stranger.

Willowby is waiting for her, twenty feet or so away, stony-faced. “You know the rules,” he says.

“I lose if you knock the rose off my chest,” Tobin confirms.

Christen walks over and places a green rose in his breast pocket. Then she approaches Tobin with a white rose, looking impossibly beautiful, absolutely untouchable.

She can feel the stem of the rose sliding into her breast pocket. Christen steps back, but instead of returning to her original location, she positions herself next to Tobin.

“Be careful,” Christen says.

“Sure. It’d be stupid to get hurt in a duel I intend to lose.”

Tobin looks into Christen’s grey-green eyes, almost disappointed not to see any opposition.

Willowby pulls a katana from its sheath, dropping the latter to the ground carelessly.

Same as before, Christen raises her hands to her chest. “Rose of the noble castle.” An orb of light swells from Christen’s fingers as the rest of the arena plunges into darkness. “Power of Dios that sleeps within me. Heed your master and come forth!” Her gown flares.

Tobin watches as Christen leans backwards, spine bending like a dancer’s. Instinctively, she reaches out catch Christen around the waist. The light radiates warmth. She draws toward it, and then towards Christen’s face, sees Christen’s closed eyes through her glasses, her lips slightly parted. She doesn’t ever want to leave.

The light flashes. Her left hand twitches.

Tobin straightens up and reaches into the light at Christen’s chest. Her hand closes around something and she pulls. The hilt emerges. She recognizes sword Willowby used the night before: a flat pink stone, a Rose Seal, at the pommel; a brass and jade knuckle-bow guard; gold metal spiraling around the black leather grip to keep her fingers in position; its single cutting edge curving up into a deadly tip.

The Sword of Dios is as light as a bamboo practice sword as Tobin points it straight up at the castle above and shouts, “Grant me the power to bring the world to revolution!”

The bells ring.

Willowby charges toward her, teeth bared, blade readied for an overhand swing across Tobin’s left side. She prepares to block.

Their blades clang together. Willowby pushes forward as Tobin takes a step back against the weight of his strike. He pursues her with a series of twohanded swings: right, left, right, left. Perfectly predictable in his anger. Even so, Tobin’s arm starts to shake from the repeated impact of his sword against hers.

She tries to break his rhythm with a quick, probing slash. He knocks it aside before hacking at her again.

The second time she attempts to break his rhythm, she loses her own and her block is sloppy.

“Yes!” he hisses, slicing downwards.

Tobin’s free hand flies up to protect the rose on her chest, as she swivels on her right foot. A whisper of metal rushes past the backs of her fingers.

What am I doing? Tobin thinks. She could have lost her hand.

“I admire your courage,” says Willowby, sounding utterly contemptuous. “You put the rose before your own body.”

She looks down at her fingers, flexing them for a moment. Looks up and sees herself reflected in Christen’s glasses.

“Your body doesn’t matter. Life and death is meaningless,” Willowby continues, more solemnly now. “The one who loses the rose loses the Duel. And the one who loses the Duel loses the Bride.”

He charges again. This time, she meets him. The contact of their blades sends vibrations down Tobin’s left arm.

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she braces the sword with her offhand at the guard of the sword. There’s not enough room on the grip for her to use both hands to resist the force of Willowby’s double-handed katana blows.

“It may be the Sword of Dios, but it has no special power by itself,” Willowby taunts as he disengages and prepares to strike again. “In the end, it must be wielded by a great swordsman.”

Swordsman. Tobin is no swordsman. She’s just a girl.

Willowby brute forces through her next parry and kicks her in the stomach. By the time he closes the distance between them, Tobin has only managed to scramble back to her knees.

“The sword and Chrissy both belong to me. They are the glory intended for John Willowby.”

He raises his blade for a final overhand chop, clearly willing to cleave her arm from her shoulder in order to part the rose from her chest.

Her ring burns.

A pillar of light surges from Tobin up into the central spire of the castle above. Through the tunnel of light descends the smell of roses and a silhouette with a fluttering cape. Something embraces Tobin from behind and above. It moves through her and settles in her feet.

_Never lose._

She rises to her toes, face turned toward the castle above, Sword of Dios held perfectly vertical above her head. It clenches around her heart: the realization of what losing means for herself, for Christen.

Willowby is swinging, seemingly through molasses. She slides right past him, flicking the tip of her blade across his chest.

Green rose petals fly into the air around them.

Tobin sags as something fades from her body.

Even Christen looks stunned.

Far away, bells ring. Casimir lowers his binoculars. Aloud, he wonders, “Was that the power to revolutionize the world? The power of Dios?”

Tobin can hardly breathe. Something. She has to remember. If she can just get enough air, then maybe she can think properly and remember—

“Tobin.” Christen is holding her up by one armpit, freeing the sword from her grip. “You’re okay.” And then she’s gone again.

*

Tobin walks back down the staircase alone. Christen doesn’t emerge from the shadows at the forest gate. Tobin waits for a couple minutes, but decides she’d rather not run into Willowby, who’s probably picked himself off the ground by now.

Back in her dorm, she poaches a small cake from the dining room and sets it out on the tea table. Christen’s absence grates on her nerves until Toca pokes his nose out.

When the door to their room opens and closes again, Tobin is laughing, frosting cream smeared on her fingers and nose, as she tries to keep Toca out of the desert.

Hands clasped behind her back, Christen leans against the door in her school uniform and watches them.

“There you are, Press.”

“You didn’t lose on purpose?”

“I didn’t do it for you.” Instead of meeting Christen’s eyes, Tobin wipes frosting off her face with her sleeve. “I did it for Toca. If you went with Willowby, my little buddy here would probably get kicked around on every day.” She taps the gerbil’s fuzzy skull as he nibbles on a hard-won piece of strawberry.

Christen neatly folds her legs beneath her skirt as she settles onto the rug next to Tobin. “Thanks.”

The room becomes way too bright as soft lips brush against Tobin’s cheeks.

“Uh—” Tobin’s head whips around. Christen is no longer paying any attention to her, instead nudging Toca onto his back to rub at his tummy. “No problem, Press.”


	3. On the Night of the Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the ingredients for a lovely ball: a suitor, a rival, a waltz.

The princess’s mother and father have just died; and she is sad, bone-deep, limblessly sad; she thinks she will never get up again.

But then he is there, her prince, in his fine white uniform and his perfume of roses; his hair brushes her forehead as he kisses each of her eyes, one after the other. And when she opens her eyes afterwards, she sees clearly what must be done; she must be a prince herself.

She must do—she has to remember—

*

Tobin jolts awake with an emptiness in her chest up. Squinting against the early morning sunlight, she unclenches her left fist and looks at the ring on her hand. There’s no other proof she actually met him. Did it lead her here? To the Duels? To Christen Press—

Christen Press who smiles that flat, tilted smile up at her, sitting on a mat in the middle of their room, evidently in the middle of a morning meditation. “Good morning, Lord Tobin.”

“Morning,” Tobin says, managing a fuzzy smile. She checks her alarm. She’s up way earlier than normal.

“Breakfast is ready if you want it.”

Tobin rolls over and half out of bed before dropping to the floor on the balls of her feet. After shrugging herself out of her pajamas and into her uniform, she descends to the dining room and starts in on some porridge.

A few minutes into her meal, Christen joins her with a pot of tea.

“Are we never going to have any company for breakfast and dinner?” Tobin asks, gesturing to the otherwise empty dining tables.

“Isn’t it nice how quiet it is?” Christen replies.

Tobin pushes the pickled vegetables around her porridge with her spoon. “Listen.”

“Yes?”

“I know you keep to yourself in class, but do you really have no friends at all?” Tobin blurts out. She immediately winces at her own choice of words.

“I do right here,” Christen says, scratching Toca under his chin. He makes a little rumbly noise of pleasure.

“Well, I guess he’s a good friend.” Tobin tries and fails to get a better read on her breakfast companion. She allows herself to be deflected for the moment, restlessly tossing crumbs to the gerbil.

*

“And another thing,” Tobin adds on the way to class, “would you stop calling me ‘Lord Tobin’?”

“I shouldn’t do that?” Christen says placidly.

They pass a group of girls chatting underneath a tree as they near the academic quad. “Tobin Heath! I love you!” one of them shouts.

“Morning!” Tobin says with a distracted wave.

“Hope you’re having a good morning, Tobin!” comes another voice.

“You too, guys.”

“Tobin Heath!” a middle schooler hollers, panting as she runs up after them. “Here!” She shoves a red slip of paper to Tobin and sprints away, giggling nervously.

Tobin unfolds the paper carefully and reads, _Tobin Heath! The lord of my heart and subject of my dreams_ _._ She turns as red as the stationery and shoves it into her schoolbag.

Christen’s lip twitches in her peripheral vision. “But you’re fine with that?”

“Well, it’s fine when _they_ do it. But it’s not a joke when you say it.”

“That’s because I’m engaged to you, Lord Tob—”

“And cut it out with the ‘engaged’ and the ‘Rose Bride’ stuff too,” Tobin insists, frustrated.

“But—”

“Look,” Tobin stops walking and waits for Christen to face her. “I know I don’t look like it, or whatever, but I’m totally just a normal girl. Okay? I’m normal. I don’t want a bride. I just want a normal guy, like everyone else!”

“Well, _I’m_ certainly glad to hear that,” a voice interrupts. Leaning against the wall of main hall is— “Casimir Davison. Student council president. Totally normal boy.” He swings his long scarlet hair over his shoulder as he pushes off the wall and towards them.

“Good morning,” Christen says.

“You know him?” Tobin asks, remembering how he intervened outside the greenhouse on Christen’s behalf.

“She _is_ the Rose Bride, after all,” he answers. He’s standing awfully close.

“So you’re into that dueling game too, huh?”

Leaning even further into her space, he whispers conspiratorially, “Have you told anyone about it?”

Tobin takes a step back. “You think I’d tell anyone about something that crazy?”

“Excellent,” he says, straightening.

Tobin starts walking again, hoping to signal that she’s finished with the conversation.

No such luck. She feels something lifting her hair. “You know even when you’re scowling, your face is wonderfully noble,” he says.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” she snaps, knocking his fingers out of her hair with a closed fist.

“Don’t be that way. We can be friends.” He holds out his right hand with a flourish, showing off a white ring with a pink stone in the center. “We already have something in common.”

Tobin stops in her tracks, eyes widening. “Why do you have that?”

“So I could meet you,” he replies, locking eyes with her. “Why else?”

Tobin blinks. _We will meet again. This ring will lead you to me._

“I’d like to get to know you much better,” Casimir says as he walks away.

Anxiously, Tobin twists the ring on her left hand. 

“Lord Tobin?”

*

A chick that cannot break its egg’s shell will die without being born.

We are the chick.

The world is our egg.

If we cannot crack the world’s shell, we will die without being born.

Smash the world’s shell for the revolution of the world!

Casimir stands before his fellow student council members. “Yesterday, Willowby dueled Tobin Heath again and lost.”

The blue-haired boy, sitting in a white metal chair, clicks his stopwatch with satisfaction. “He hasn’t left his room since. I don’t think he’ll be in class today.”

From the seat next to him, Heather tosses her orange ribbon curls over her shoulder carelessly. “Whatever. What about Tobin Heath? Is she trying to bring revolution to the world, like we are?”

“No, she’s different from us.” He looks pensively out over the school grounds. “I suspect she hasn’t received a letter from End of the World.”

“Then why is she wearing a Rose Seal?” Heather asks.

“Why indeed?”

*

From the second floor window, Tobin watches Casimir hold court with a flock of girls, mostly juniors and seniors, while leaning against a pillar in the courtyard.

Who is he? she wonders.

“TOBY!” A body slams into her from behind, nearly bowling her out of the window. Again.

“Mari!” Flailing wildly, Tobin manages to stop them from tumbling headfirst to their mutual deaths.

“Hi, Toby, my love!”

She staggers backwards from the window with Mari’s arms still hooked around her neck. “Geez. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit dangerous?”

“Nah,” Mari says dismissively before peering out the window herself. “Oooh, are you spying on Casimir Davidson? Now I get it.”

“Now you get _what_?” Tobin demands, embarrassed. She crosses her arms and refuses to look out the window again as a matter of principle.

“Hmm, well you’d better get over him quick. He’s the biggest player on campus. I’ve heard _so_ many rumors about him breaking hearts.”

“No way he’s my prince then,” Tobin mutters.

“What are you talking about—wait!” Mari grabs her arm excitedly. “I think he just looked up here!”

But by the time Tobin turns, he’s simply leaving the courtyard with a fleet of girls in his wake.

“Who’d you end up with in the East Dorm anyways?” Mari asks.

“Oh, uh, I’m in a double with Christen Press actually.” She turns away from Mari, folding her elbows into her palms.

“ _Really_?” Mari says, dragging the word out slowly.

Tobin arches an eyebrow. “Yes. Really.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I don’t see what the problem is.”

“I heard,” Mari’s eyes dart around and she lowers her voice, “a lot of people talking this morning about how she did something bad to a really popular boy. They say he wasn’t in class all day.”

“Well, people should mind their own business,” Tobin snaps.

Mari pushes her arm. “It’s just gossip, Toby.”

Tobin feels hot all over. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Wait, do you know what happened?” Mari says, tugging the front of Tobin’s blazer. “Spill!”

“I…uh. No, look!” Tobin backtracks. “We talked a lot the other night is all. And Press is cool okay. So lay off. She’s just, you know, shy and a little weird.”

“Oh well, if you say so, Toby!” Mari says. “Don’t want to cause drama for you in your new living arrangement.”

Tobin sighs.

“I can’t stop other people from talking though.”

*

“You ruined Willowby!”

“He won’t come out of the kendo room now!”

“You bitch!”

Christen backs up against the wall of the athletic building. One of the trio of middle school girls who have cornered her shoves her into the wall. Another, the leader, a girl with wild auburn pigtails, yanks her schoolbag from her hands, unbuttoning the flap and spilling its contents across the ground.

“We want our Willowby back!”

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

Christen shrinks away.

“What exactly is going on here?” a new voice chimes in. A young blonde girl in a perfectly pressed Oneiro uniform stalks over with her arms folded across her chest.

“Oh, Tamara,” one of the girls says nervously, “we were just—”

“If you’re having any problems,” Tamara says coolly, “I suggest you take them up with the student council.”

“Well, it’s not that sort of problem…” another of the trio mutters.

“Hmm?” Tamara’s mouth slants into a sly, expectant smile.

“We—we’ll just go then.” The trio scurries off around the corner.

Turning to Christen, Tamara’s face melts. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

“Um, yes.” Christen blinks. “Thanks.”

“Oh great.” Her eyes flick up and down over Christen. “You know, I can see why you’re so popular with the boys, Press. I mean, even with the senior guys…”

Christen folds her arms into each other defensively. “Um…”

Apparently unfazed, Tamara chatters on. “…that’s probably how you got nominated to be Queen of the Ball.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh don’t be sorry! You _have to_ come to the Opening Ball. We’re hosting it at my place—I mean, my family’s place in the village—this weekend. Invite-only." Tamara titters. “And besides, all the boys would be so disappointed if you didn’t come. I know my brother would be so upset for sure.”

“I don’t think—”

“Oh come on! You can’t win the crown if you don’t even go. I bet you’d have so much fun. And I’ve wanted to hang out with you since forever!”

“What?”

“I think you and I are going to be best friends,” Tamara insists.

*

“Drat!” Christen exclaims when she reveals that the playing card she’s just pulled from her opponent’s hand is a Joker. “I fell for it again!”

Tobin feels a smile tugging at her lips at how gleefully Christen takes her loss. But then, something heavy drags her lips down again. “Press,” she says seriously.

“Yes?” Christen says airily.

Squeaking thoughtfully, Toca clumsily plays a card from his hand, almost falling over from the sheer size of the cards that he’s somehow clutching in his front paws.

“Do you _really_ have no friends?” Tobin asks.

“I told you already. He’s right in front of me.”

“I mean…” Tobin sighs. “Look, Toca is a very impressive gerbil but—”

The buzzer to their building rings. “Delivery!” a calls out.

There are two packages on the door, one for each of them.

With Tobin reading over her shoulder, Christen unseals the note attached to her package.

As a nominee for the Queen of the Opening Ball, the Committee invites you to attend the dance this weekend and requests that you wear the enclosed dress. We look forward to your attendance.

Christen pulls a full-length light-green gown out of the box.

“Wow,” Tobin says, watching as Christen holds the dress up to her body to check its length. She imagines how the dark green sash would look wrapped tight around Christen’s waist. “I heard there was some sort of party going on this weekend.”

Christen nods at the other box. “What’s in yours, Lord Tobin?”

To: Tobin Heath  
From: Casimir Davidson, Student Council President

Tobin frowns. She peels off the card taped off on its side and discovers an invitation to the same dance. A cartoon version of Casimir winks and blows her a kiss.

See you on the night of the ball! —Casimir

Toca scurries over to sniff at one corner, then recoils.

“I feel you, bud.” Tobin chucks the card over to the trash can, frisbee-style, wondering how much the thick creamy paper it was printed on had cost.

Reluctantly, Tobin lifts the lid on the cardboard box. “Ugh! What is this thing?” She yanks out a pale pink, open-shoulder dress with a red rose affixed to the chest. “Does he really think I’d go out wearing something like this?” she scoffs, letting the fabric crumple back into the box.

“So you’re not going?” Christen asks.

“No way. Not my scene.” Kicking aside the dress box, Tobin flops to the ground.

“Then I won’t either.”

“What? Wait, why?” Tobin sits back up. “Come on, Press, you could be the Queen or something, right?”

Christen folds the dress up and places it back into its box. “I don’t really like being around lots of people.” She smooths out the fabric and closes the lid. “Everyone’s face starts to look the same. I get—I just don’t really enjoy it.”

As Christen sets the dress box aside, Tobin watches her from behind and thinks about her holding the green gown up to her body. Thinks that it she would look so pretty, especially with those purple roses she keeps in her hair.

Christen’s face is tranquil when she settles back down by the tea table and picks up her hand of cards again. “It’s your turn, Toca. No slacking.”

“No, you should go!” Tobin blurts out. “You _have_ to go. You need friends!”

Toca squeaks indignantly.

“Yeah, I know, bud. But she needs lots more!”

Christen doesn’t say anything, just stares thoughtfully at her cards.

“I’ll go with you, Press,” Tobin says, pushing Christen’s leg with her foot. “What do you say, come to a dance with me?”

Finally, she turns towards Tobin with that flat, tilted smile. “If you say so, Lord Tobin.”

*

“Man, this is a lot,” Tobin says as they walk up to the white marble mansion on the outskirts of Oneiro Village. “What even is this place?”

“Casimir Davidson lives here. And his younger sister.”

“Wait, this is his _house_?”

Inside, round tables draped in white linen litter the first floor, loaded with food. Servers and students swarm the area like flies, but a conspicuous empty space in front of the stage has been marked off for dancing. On either end of the room, stairs lead up to a second-floor walkway that overlooks the action.

“No way,” a girl whispers, “Tobin Heath in girls’ clothes?”

“She’s so cool in that boys’ uniform but she looks divine in a dress.”

Tobin picks at the edges of said dress in annoyance. “I knew I shouldn’t have worn this dumb thing,” she complains. She feels uncharacteristically clumsy in its ruffled hoop skirt. It’s like she’s walking around in an upside-down cup.

“I’m sorry, Lord Tobin. You’re embarrassing yourself for me.”

“Embarrassing myself? Do I really look that ridiculous?” Tobin fusses over herself for a moment, but then feels a slight pressure against the hoop.

Christen is pushing up against her side, shrinking away from the crowd, wide-eyed.

She reaches out and loops an arm through Christen’s. Tobin can just barely feel her trembling. “Hey, Press, let’s go upstairs. Way less people up there.”

Pulling Christen as close as the skirt will allow, she leads them up to the second-floor balconies.

*

Casimir watches restlessly from above as guests trickle into his home. A pair of hands cover his eyes.

“Guess who…” a high-pitched voice asks.

“Cut it out, Tamara.”

She giggles and snuggles into his arm.

“What did I do to deserve such an adoring baby sister?”

A school official picks up a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming this evening. We are here to celebrate the new year and crown a Queen. I hope everyone participates in the voting.”

Casimir’s attention drifts from the speaker to a pair of new arrivals in pink and green.

“You like her?” Tamara asks with a saccharine smile. “ _All_ you can talk about lately is Christen Press, so I invited her.” She flounces off in satisfaction.

Without noticing, Casimir inhales deeply. “Tobin Heath. My princess.”

*

“Tamara!” a middle school girl with wild pigtails hisses, hurrying her way up the stairs as best she can in her floor-length dress. “She’s here, she’s wearing your special dress.”

“I saw.” Tamara smiles triumphantly.

The remaining two of the trio arrive. “They’re coming upstairs now!” they announce excitedly.

“That’s my cue then,” Tamara says, sweeping off to meet her guest of honor.

*

Tobin can feel Christen relaxing as they reach the upper floor. They maneuver to a quiet spot near the stairs and lean over the balcony.

“Better?” she asks.

Christen tilts her head back at her. “You don’t look ridiculous at all,” she says. Her voice makes Tobin feel even more unbalanced in her stupid dress.

“You pretty un-ridiculous too,” she says, reaching out to touch the short puffy sleeve of the green gown. “This material seems really fancy. I’ve never seen it before.” A wave of nervous energy washes over her. What if Christen thinks she’s jealous of her dress? “Not that the gown is what looks ridiculous—un-ridiculous, I mean. I don’t know anything about fashion. But you—you look really nice. You know, you always look really…pleasant.”

“I live to please, Lord Tobin.” There’s that sly, teasing edge in Christen’s voice that makes want Tobin both throw herself off the balcony.

“Right. Uh, now what?” Tobin looks around the balcony. Only a few people are up here. It’s her first high school dance, Tobin realizes. What do people do at these things? She wishes Mari were here. Mari would know. Mari would be a better friend to have at a dance. But Christen is stuck here with her instead, and Tobin has no idea if this was a good idea at all.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” a cheery voice calls out. A blonde girl in a formfitting yellow dress swoops over to them. Tobin stifles a snort at the enormous—truly enormous—purple bow affixed to her bodice. “Oh, wow! That dress looks so good on you!”

“Yeah right,” Tobin scoffs.

The blonde turns her head slightly and arches an eyebrow at her.

“Oh wait, you mean Press! Yeah, totally—”

“Yes,” the blonde says regarding Tobin as though she’s a particularly loud mosquito. “I was talking to my dear friend here. And you are?”

“Tobin He—hold on, you’re friends with Press?”

The blonde girl seems to decide that Tobin—and her newfound inability to form proper sentences—are a waste of her time and seizes Christen’s hand. Honestly, Tobin can’t blame her.

“Let’s go!” the blonde announces, tugging Christen along. “The nominees are gathering over here.”

Tobin watches as Christen is dragged off across the balcony, looking a little dazed. She puts two thumbs up and mouths, _You’ll do fantastic!_

They disappear into the crowd, and Tobin facepalms. “What’s wrong with me?” she mutters to herself. Once she manages to suppress her embarrassment, by planning out how she’s going to apologize to Christen for looking like such a loser in front of her friend, a smile creeps over her face. Christen has a _friend_. Maybe pushing her to come to this dance wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

“You look magnificent.”

Tobin whirls around. “…me?”

“Of course,” Casimir Davidson says, settling on the railing next to her. His eyes trace her shoulders hungrily. “Even lovelier than I imagined.”

Tobin turns away from his gaze. “You must have an active imagination, because this thing doesn’t fit me at all.”

He leans in. “Don’t be absurd. You’re the queen of this school. I would be delighted to dance with you in that dress.”

Tobin’s throat goes tight. She thinks about his ring, the way he had seemed so confident. _So I could meet you. Why else?_

“Don’t you think we make the picture-perfect couple?” he asks, drawing closer. She can feel his voice in her ear again.

Tobin wonders if they do. Her pink against his red-trimmed suit. She thinks of Mari warning her off him. What if the reason he’s never settled down with any other girl is because he was waiting for her?

“Shall we dance?” he asks.

Tobin pulls away. “Will you just stop? I’m not into these sorts of parties.”

“Then why haven’t you left?” he asks, his voice low.

“In case, you were…”

“What about me?” he says smiling in away that makes Tobin want to bare her teeth and growl.

A shriek brings the entire dance to a halt.

“Christen?” Tobin’s eyes dart through the crowd below them. Her eye catches in an area where students are backing away, leaving a lone figure in the middle, hunched over and shivering. The green gown is in tatters, seeming to melt off her body. One of the servers stands to the side, holding a bottle of sparkling water, looking horrified.

A murmur swells throughout the hall.

“Oh my god,” Tobin hears someone say, “I always knew she was a slut.”

“I bet this is some stunt to win the contest.”

“Press!” Tobin shouts, propelling herself over the banister, arms windmilling as she teeters in her hoop skirt. She skids her way down the staircase railing on the rubber soles of her Mary Janes as though she’s grinding a rail on a skateboard.

The sea of faces swivel towards her, as she launches herself from the bottom of the railing onto the nearest table. Serving platters clink nervously at her impact, but Tobin can’t be bothered to slow down. She surges from one table to the next until she thumps onto the table next to Christen with a clatter.

Christen looks up from where she’s huddled over her own half naked body, cradling her chest. “Tobin?”

Tobin drops to the floor and decisively yanks the tablecloth out from underneath the multi-tier serving trays and glasses half-full of sparkling cider. White linen billows as Tobin pulls Christen to her feet, wrapping her in the cloth and tying it off in a knot around her shoulder.

“Let’s dance, Press,” Tobin says, as music starts to rise from the speakers on stage.

Christen smiles cautiously at her, a hint of white teeth poking out. Her right hand meets Tobin’s left as Tobin drop her free hand to her waist.

She can feel Christen breathing, soft on her face, and Christen’s legs through the linen pressed up against Tobin’s thighs. Tobin looks down, blinking, and realizes she’s wearing her shorts. She’s back in her uniform?

No, not quite. She watches Christen’s finger trace over the aiguillette on her chest. The silk trim along the hem of her blazer and the tassels on the epaulettes catch the air as they turn through the waltz. She’s dressed like she was in the arena last time, ready for battle.

Distantly, Tobin notices that the crowd is parting around them, that people are whispering, that everyone will talk, and all she can think is, _Let them watch_.

*

Tamara seethes as she watches the girl who stole brother’s attention dance through the ballroom like some sort of princess, somehow even more lovely in a tablecloth than in that green dress.

“Tamara, show some restraint in your pranks,” a solemn voice says behind her. Casimir’s face, her brother’s perfectly handsome face, is set in a frown. “You’re derailing my dance.”

She turns to him with wide, innocent eyes. “My pranks? What do you mean?” she asks.

He stares her down, unimpressed.

“Who’s the girl dancing with Press anyways?” she asks breezily.

“Tobin Heath.”

“Tobin Heath?”

“Yes, isn’t she…exciting? It’s a shame she’s no longer wearing the dress I sent her.”

“You gave a dress to a girl like _that_?”

*

“How do you do that?” Tobin asks softly into the purple rose petals in Christen’s hair.

“Do what?”

_Make me feel like I am a prince. Like I know what to do._

“You make me feel like I know who I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the anime shenanigans commence! Ripping off an open-shoulder dress in the middle of a ballroom to reveal you were wearing a blazer underneath all along? Sure, that'll totally make sense in close third-person.
> 
> Thanks for reading folks! Hope you enjoy.


	4. The Sunlit Garden: Prelude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another Student Council member reveals himself. Can he be a friend?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: brief reference to potential sexual assault

Morning light seeps in through the music room window over the blue-haired boy sitting on the piano bench. He deliberately makes his way through a run. Stops and repeats it. Repeats it again.

The door opens. He stops.

The tap of shoes across the floor. Then clapping.

“You sound amazing!” Tamara Davidson exclaims.

He listlessly taps the middle-C key.

“Why did you drop out of competition?” she asks, stepping closer to the instrument. “All the teachers were so disappointed.”

“This piano is a little out of tune,” the blue-haired boy says.

“That’s weird. I saw them tune it last week.”

The boy taps middle-C again. “Then maybe I’m the one who needs tuning.” He straightens and takes the tune from the start. The opening bars are light and tinkling, like sunlight dropping through leaves, but he strikes each note carefully, frowning at his fingers.

“You always play this song when you’re alone,” Tamara says, casually dropping to the ground beside the piano.”

“It’s the only song that means anything to me,” he says, still playing.

Tamara reaches into his bag and pulls out a green notebook.

He continues, “If I keep playing, maybe she’ll hear.”

“She?” Tamara asks absently, flipping through the notebook as quietly as she can. Her eyes fly over the pages, skimming over months of Student Council notes.

“But I can’t get it to sound right.” The song plods on deliberately. “No matter what I do, I can’t figure which note to follow.”

“Sounds great to me. Really shows your emotions.”

The boy doesn’t notice her lack of attention. “It’s a song about how I can’t express the eternal beauty I feel inside.”

“What’s it called?” Tamara asks cheerily.

“The Sunlit Garden.”

He misses entirely the sullen anger on Tamara’s face as she glares at a photo of Christen Press watering flowers hidden among the pages of the notebook.

*

Mari groans, letting her head drop to her desk. “Ugh. This is the worst grade I’ve ever gotten.”

“Must really suck to be you,” Tobin says without looking up from her own desk.

“I just wish I could get a 99 in math.” She flops over dramatically, half lying on the desk. “I’m not asking for a 100. Just a 99. Just once.”

“You’d have to develop an understanding of logic,” Tobin respond flatly.

“Oh, you know what my mother used to tell me?” She lifts her chin, adopting a snooty, authoritative voice. “A real woman can force her logic onto any man!”

“Your mother is something else.”

“I just wish I could be good at math like you,” Mari sighs.

Tobin thrusts her math test above her head. A circled 38 emblazoned in red sits at the top of the page.

Bouncing to her feet, Mari snatches the test from Tobin’s hand. “No way! You’re usually at least decent at math.”

“I’ve been a little distracted.” Tobin slumps on her desk.

“Shame on you,” Mari clucks, jabbing Tobin with an elbow. “You should develop an understanding of logic.”

“I’ll have to take a make-up exam with this score,” Tobin complains.

“Sucks to be you,” Mari teases.

Tobin holds up a middle finger.

“Or does it?” Mari continues. “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me you got invited to the Opening Ball!”

“It was no big—”

“And you went with Christen Press instead of me!”

Tobin presses her right cheek against desk, worried that Mari will see warmth growing there. “She got her own invite. She was nominated or something.”

“Well, did she win?”

“Dunno. We left early.”

“What are you like friends now?”

“Yes, Mari, we’re friends,” Tobin says deliberately. She finally picks up her head to see Mari’s reaction. “Is that a problem?”

“Of course not!” Mari insists, patting the side of Tobin’s face. She crushes Tobin’s skull to her chest in either a hug or a grapple. With Mari, it’s never quite clear. “Just so long as you remember that I’m your _best_ friend.”

“You’d never let me forget,” Tobin complains as she pries herself free. “I’d have to—” The rest of her sentence vanishes as her attention flies out the classroom window to the stone pathway between buildings.

“What? You’d have to what?” asks Mari, tugging at Tobin’s sleeve.

“Who’s that boy walking with Press?”

“Huh?” Mari follows her gaze outside where Christen Press is walking alongside a blue-haired boy. “Oh, it’s Sebby.”

Tobin blinks.

“You don’t know who Sebastian Idanikos is?” Mari rolls her eyes. “He’s like actually a genius. He should be a freshman like us, but I heard he’s taking college classes. _And_ he plays piano and fences at the national level. Plus, isn’t he super cute?”

“Wow.”

“He’s really popular. Even the senior girls are totally in love with him.” By then, both Tobin and Mari practically have their foreheads against the glass. “But what would he be doing with Christen Press?” Mari mumbles half under her breath.

Fiddling with the hem of her shorts, Tobin opens her mouth to say something, but then closes it.

*

Heather descends into the lower level of the library. Her blue eyes sweep the room until she catches sight of Sebastian at one of the study tables.

He clicks his stopwatch just as her hand lands on his right shoulder.

“There you are.”

He jumps slightly and turns. “Oh, it’s just you.

“You weren’t at your dorm or the council, so I figured you were studying here.” She nods, curls swaying, at the papers on the table before him, written over in red ink. “Going over someone’s math test?”

“Yeah,” he says sheepishly.

“That’s surprising. You don’t do that for most people.”

“Heather? Don’t you think happiness can be closer than you expect sometimes?”

She studies him closely. “You told us once that you lost something a long time ago.”

“Yes. My shining thing. I think I might have found it.”

*

Tobin walks into the common room of the East Dorm to see Christen sitting with Sebastian Idanikos at one of the spare tables.

“Here,” Sebastian says, sliding a stack of papers over to Christen, “I did the work for all these problems.”

Toca scrambles down her shoulder as Tobin slaps her notebook down on the closed lid of the dusty piano with a huff. “What do you think, Toca?” she asks the gerbil. “Should I get a mathematically minded boyfriend too?” She wonders if Christen would ever ask her for help with schoolwork. Probably not given her current math score.

By way of response, Toca starts nibbling on her eraser. She sighs and pulls the piano bench around the side of the instrument, so she can kneel on it and use the lid as a writing surface.

“Tobin Heath,” Sebastian calls out from the table. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Seb.” He smiles.

“You know me?” Tobin asks, puzzled.

“Of course. You’re all we seem to talk about lately.”

“Who’s we?”

“Us,” he says, holding up his right hand so Tobin can see the Rose Seal on his ring finger.

Tobin bristles. “You’re one of the Student Council?” She takes in his white blazer, similar to Casimir’s and Willowby’s, and his creased blue pants. Her left hand clenches. “So, you’re chasing the Rose Bride too?”

Sebastian lowers his hand, looking taken aback. “No. Please, I’m not like that. I’m a member of the Council, but I don’t want to fight a duel to make Miss Press my bride. Promise.”

Tobin pointedly flips open her notebook and kneels on the bench, facing away.

Looking nervous, Sebastian clears his throat and turns back to Christen. “Here’s a few problems that I think will be similar to the ones on the makeup exam. If you just memorize these formulas and they’ll be pretty easy.”

“Thank you, Seb,” Christen says easily.

“No problem,” he replies with a bit of a blush.

Tobin’s eyes narrow. “Looks to me like you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Press.”

“Miss Press reminds me a bit of a girl I know. That’s all,” he says earnestly. “I’m not going to fight a duel with you.”

“You better not,” Tobin snaps. “Do you Student Council jerks know how much of a pain you are? We’ve gotten so sucked up into your dumb dueling game that now we’ve got to take these stupid make-up exams!”

“We?” Sebastian asks. “You’re taking a makeup exam too?”

Tobin flushes once she realizes what she’s just admitted. “Well, actually, yes,” she mutters.

“I can help!” he offers, excited. “Just give me your exam. I’ll go through it and all three of us can work on it tomorrow.”

Tobin’s pride spits and hisses, but the part of her realizes that the boy is trying to be nice and she might be a little bit unreasonable. She really doesn’t want to teach herself all this math either.

“That sounds excellent,” Christen says happily. “Don’t you think so, Lord Tobin?”

“I guess that could be okay,” Tobin starts.

*

“So you know Seb from Student Council?” Tobin asks as she and Christen are getting ready for bed.

Christen hums in affirmation.

“Are you, like, friends?” Tobin tugs off her blazer and tosses it on her chair.

“Not really.”

“Well, it seems like you guys are close. I saw you walking around together earlier today. Laughing.”

“Oh, he stepped in today when a couple of the others were being…difficult. That’s all. And then he offered to help me with my math test.”

“Wait, who was being difficult?”

“You know, just some students.”

“Hey Press.” Tobin stares up at the dark ceiling, listening to Christen giggle as she messes around with Toca. “Did you stay in the same room as Willowby too? When he… when he…”

The giggling pauses, but Christen’s voice is light. “It is my duty to be engaged to the victor of the Duels.”

“Did he… I mean, engaged, like…”

“The Engaged may do whatever they wish with me.”

Tobin doesn’t know if she has the words to ask for any more details, but her chest feels like a pot about to boil over. “How can you be _fine_ with being treated like an object?”

“The rules of the Rose Seal are absolute,” Christen says with finality.

It takes a long time for Tobin to fall asleep.

*

Dear Diary,

Today I ran into Sebby (cute little Sebby, who of course doesn’t hold a candle to my dear big brother), on his way back from the East Dorm Building and discovered that he’s going to be tutoring Christen Press and Tobin Heath in math. Of course, I batted some eyelashes at him and asked if I could join in. I just want to get a preview of high school math so that I can understand how what I’m learning in middle school will be applied at higher levels. He never stood a chance against my charms!

Oh, this is perfect! I’ll show Sebby that Little Miss Press isn’t the prim and proper girl he thinks she is. I can see the scene unfolding already. I’ve already fished the largest slimiest snail I could find from the school pond. I’ll hide it in my bag along with a pair of tongs. And then, once everyone is settled in, working on their math I’ll reach behind my back and prepare the snail in my tongs.

I’ll ask, “My dear Miss Press, may I borrow an eraser?”

Then, when she passes the pencil case to me, I’ll flick the snail into position and thrust the pencil case from my body, swooning piteously and crying out, “A snail! There’s a snail in there!”

“That girl keeps a snail in her pencil box!” Seb will cry out in shock.

That moron Tobin Heath will say, “Press, I’ve misjudged you! I’m so disillusioned.”

“The game is up, Christen Press!” I’ll declare. 

Oh, that’s exactly how it will happen!

I call it: _Operation Christen Press is a Weirdo Who Keeps a Snail in Her Pencil Box_!

When the doorbell rings, Tobin thunders downstairs to the front door.

Looking a little sheepish on the front doorstep, Sebastian says, “Sorry I’m late—”

“No problem. We’ve been waiting. Come in.”

“Wait, um, actually—"

A blonde girl—weirdly familiar—pops up from behind Sebastian and beams at her. “Mind if I join you guys? Sebby here is just such a good teacher.”

Tobin scratches her temple, “Aren’t you the girl that—”

The blonde sticks out a hand. “I’m Tamara.”

“Right,” says Tobin, shaking it cautiously. “We’ve met I think.” She peers over the girl’s shoulder and mouths to Sebastian, _Your girlfriend?_

“No way!” he yelps.

Tamara glares at him. It clicks in Tobin’s memory: this is the girl who said she was Christen’s friend at dance.

“Okay. Why not? Press is waiting upstairs.”

“Great!” Sebastian says.

“Thanks so much for having me!” chirps Tamara.

The four of them sit at the tea table in Tobin and Christen’s bedroom.

“Oh my gosh, what a neat and lovely room!” Tamara exclaims as Christen fills four cups with tea.

Sebastian pulls a stack of papers from his bag and begins distributing them. “I heard a rumor that this was a haunted house, but it’s actually super nice here.”

“Yeah,” Tobin says. “You can thank Press for all of that. She puts a lot of work into keeping everything clean.”

“You like to keep things organized, Miss Press?” Sebastian asks fondly.

“Wow, I’m so impressed,” Tamara adds.

“You’re so lucky that you’re living with such domestic roommate, Tobin,” Sebastian says. Tobin arches an eyebrow at him. “Anyways, let’s start with systems of equations. So to guarantee that you can solve for every variable the system, you need at least as many equations as variables.”

“Huh, yeah, I guess I never noticed that in the practice problems,” Tobin responds, scanning through her exam.

Tamara mutters something.

“Did you have a question, Tamara?” Sebastian asks.

“Oh no!” Tamara replies with a smile, kneeling over the table with her left hand behind her back.

“Okay, then let’s start with the simple problems.”

Tobin sighs.

“Don’t worry. Once you start practicing, it’s going to be easy. They’re kind of fun, like solving a puzzle.” Sebastian leans over and starts talking them through the first exam problem.

“Miss Press, may I borrow an eraser?” Tamara asks.

“Sure,” Christen says, passing along her plastic pencil case.

Tobin keeps working through the problem, realizing that if she just substitutes—

“SNAILS! There are snails in there!”

Tobin glances up to see Tamara gaping at the squirming, tumorous mass of snails and slime in Christen’s pencil case. Only Christen could keep such a large colony thriving in such a tight enclosure.

“Oh yes,” Christen says. “That’s where my snails live.”

Tobin sighs, “I told you not to keep them in there, Press.”

That’s so cute,” says Sebastian. “It’s just like Miss Press to do that.”

Quivering, Tamara points at the snail pile. “B-b-but they’re snails! What’s cute about snails?!”

Christen scoops her snails back into the pencil box. “Catherine, Juliet, Marcelina, I’ll see you all later!”

Dear Diary,

If, for some improbable reason, _Operation: Christen Press is a Weirdo Who Keeps a Snail in Her Pencil Box_ fails, I have formulated a second course of action

Last night, I caught a garter snake in the gardens and put it in a little cardboard box. I’ll ready the snake in my tongs and sidle casually over to Little Miss Press’s desk.

“My, what an adorable desk! I wish I had one like it!” I’ll say. Then, as I run my hand over the smooth wood paneling and test the drawers, I’ll swoon, falling backwards dramatically, and cry out, “A garter snake! There’s a garter snake!”

“That girl keeps a garter snake in her desk drawer!” Seb will cry out in shock.

That moron Tobin Heath will say, “Press, I’ve misjudged you! I’m so disillusioned.”

“The game is up, Christen Press!” I’ll declare. 

Oh, it’s going to happen just like that!

I call it: _Operation Christen Press is a Weirdo Who Keeps a Garter Snake in Her Desk Drawer_!

Sebastian, Tobin decides, is actually a pretty decent teacher. He’s patient, encouraging, and extremely articulate. After blasting through the basic set for problems, they turn to more challenging word problems.

Seb clicks his watch and leans over. “I see where you got caught, Miss Heath. It’s right here.”

“Where?”

He taps on Tobin’s paper with his pen. “Well, in this case…”

“In this case, you leave me no choice,” Tamara mutters.

“Sorry, did you say something, Tamara?” he asks.

“Of course not!” she replies.

“For triangle ABC, the line XY is parallel to BC,” Tobin reads out. “So…”

Tamara, apparently bored, gets up and walks over to Christen’s desk. “Oh my gosh! What an adorable desk! I wish I had one like it!”

Tobin hears the scrape of a drawer being opened and then a short growl.

Tamara shrieks, waving around a pair of tongs with a long brown rodent dangling from one end, its teeth sunk into a scaly flesh.

“Oh, that’s the drawer where Mr. Mongoose lives,” Christen says cheerfully.

“I told you not to keep him in there.”

“That’s adorable!” Seb chimes in. “It’s just like Miss Press to do that.”

“She has a mongoose!” Tamara exclaims, stamping her foot. “Don’t either of you think that’s weird?”

“It’s just Press,” Tobin says.

Christen scoops Mr. Mongoose up like a doll, holding him beneath his forelegs with both hands. She plops him back into the top drawer, cooing, “We’re studying now, so I’ll have to see you later. Did you like eating that mean old snake?”

Dear Diary,

If, both _Operation Christen Press is a Weirdo Who Keeps a Snail in Her Pencil Box_ and _Operation Christen Press is a Weirdo Who Keeps a Garter Snake in Her Desk Drawer_ fail (really, truly inconceivable, I know), fear not, for I the ruthlessly intelligent and capable Tamara Davidson have a final failsafe plan.

I’ve sent for a live octopus which just arrived this morning. I’ll stow him in a plastic bag of water alongside a pair of gloves. And I’ll just walk up to their closet and pull open the door— Why? Who knows why? It doesn’t matter why, because they’ll all be so distracted when I tumble back, screaming: “An octopus! There’s an octopus in there!”

“That girl keeps live octopus in her closet!” Seb will cry out in shock.

That moron Tobin Heath will say, “Press, I’ve misjudged you! I’m so disillusioned.”

And then I’ll declare, “Oh-hoho, this time the game really is up, Christen Press!”

That’s definitely what will happen! 100%! Nothing can go wrong!

I call it _Operation Christen Press is a Total Weirdo Who Keeps a Live Octopus in Her Closet_!

Sebastian clicks his stopwatch again.

“So what do I do here?” Tobin asks, pushing over her notebook.

“Christen Press, this time I will vanquish you!” Tamara mutters. “You will be vanquished!”

I could have sworn you said something, Tamara,” says Sebastian.

“No, I didn’t!” Tamara snaps. “I’m fine!”

She storms over to Tobin and Christen’s shared closet.

Is she wearing rubber gloves? Tobin wonders. “Hey, what are you doing over there?” Tobin calls out, half-standing. “Don’t open—"

Tamara laughs. With an edge of hysteria in her voice, she shouts, “Now! I reveal—” She looks into the tiny room and— “Octopus! Octopus! Octopus! Octopus!” she shrieks as a massive red octopus, clearly too small for the space it occupies bursts from the closet on top of her. “Get it off!” The room fills with the smell of cheap plastic.

“Geez,” Tobin says, “don’t you know it’s dangerous to just go around sticking your nose in people’s closets.”

“This can’t be real,” Tamara says, shaken, lying on the floor half-covered by tentacles. “How could you fit such a gigantic octopus here? All these tentacles.”

“That looks like the octopus balloon they had at the school fair,” Sebastian says.

“It is,” Christen confirms. “They threw it away, but I felt so bad for it, I brought it back here.”

“I thought you were going to toss it, Press,” says Tobin. “Didn’t you say you were sick of it?”

Sebastian sighs. “Oh, it’s just like Miss Press to do something like that.”

Tamara lies limp in the tentacles. They can clean up the mess later, Tobin figures, returning to her work. To her left, Christen is scribbling furiously in her notebook, and Tobin is determined not to look stupid or unwilling to learn.

Sebastian takes her notebook and coaches her through the next problem. “So x equals 3. Now you substitute it in to find the other value.” He passes Tobin’s notebook back to her.

“Oh, now I see! 3 + y is… How does this look?”

“You got it!” Sebastian says.

“You’re a real genius, man!” Tobin says. “You made math understandable.” She beams.

Christen bursts into giggles beside them.

“Uh, Press?” Tobin asks, self-consciously.

Looking over, she sees Christen is thumbing rapidly the pages through her notebook. On the lower right corner of each page, she’s drawn a cartoon elephant running and is now laughing at animation she’s created for herself.

“Weren’t you studying with us?” Tobin asks. Christen keeps laughing. “The exam’s next week.”

Christen composes herself. “Yes, Lord Tobin.” But a few more chuckles break through.

“How did you do the first time around anyway?”

“Oh, I got a zero,” Christen says with an easy smile. “I always take the makeup. It doesn’t bother me.”

*

“Hey guys,” Tobin asks after another couple hours pass, “maybe we should stop for some food.”

“Sure,” Sebastian answers. “Tamara?”

“Oh, right, a snack,” Tamara says dazedly from her place among the octopus tentacles. She blinks and then sits up. “Actually, I packed a snack for us.” She reaches into her bag to pull out a lunch box. “I hope you all like it.”

She removes the lid to reveal Toca, stuffing himself with the remains of what looks to be some tasty cookies. Tamara laughs weakly. “Is this another one of Miss Press’s friends?”

“Toca, shame on you!” Christen scolds.

Steam seems to pour from Tamara’s ears.

“I’m sorry! I’ll make something for us instead,” Christen says rushing out of the room.

She returns with four servings of red and yellow shaved ice. “It’s really good when you mix the lemon with the strawberry,” she says, as she hands out the bowls.

“She’s right,” Seb says through his spoon. “This is great!”

Christen smiles. “It’s my specialty.”

“You’ll have to give me the recipe.”

“Can I get a little extra syrup?” Tobin interjects. She slurps through the shaved ice.

Christen says softly, “Tamara, you’d better eat yours before it melts.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tamara bites out.

“Don’t be rude,” Sebastian says.

Tamara continues as though unable to stop. “Snails in her pencil box. A mongoose in her desk drawer. A giant octopus balloon in her closet. And now shaved ice for dinner?!” She slams her bowl down on the tea table. “You’re making me sick! I have a very delicate stomach.”

Christen looks down, a little sad.

“I like shaved ice,” Tobin says, bristling. “Too bad you have such a weak stomach.”

“This isn’t about the ice or my stomach! Why does everyone _like_ her so much?!” Tamara demands.

“Why are you acting like this?” asks Sebastian. “You said you wanted to be Miss Press’s friend.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tamara sniffs. “You’re in love with her Sebby! Admit it!”

Seb stutters.

Does Seb actually like Christen? Does Christen like him back? Is she keeping Christen having a chance at love with a really nice guy?

She turns to check Christen’s reaction and— “Where’s Christen?”

“She’s gone,” Seb says alarmed.

“She’s probably overwhelmed by all the shouting,” Tobin says. “I’m going to look for her.”

“I’ll go with you,” Seb insists.

They hear the muffled sound of the common room piano playing. All three of them clamber to their feet.

“Isn’t that the song you’re always playing?” Tamara asks, tugging on Seb’s sleeve as they walk down the hall.

In the common room, Christen sits bathed in moonlight at the piano bench, her fingers dancing over the keys. Toca bobs his head with the beat from his place next to the sheet music holder..

“Wow, I didn’t know Press played piano,” Tobin whispers.

Seb’s voice is hushed, awestruck. His eyes are as wide and open as the sky. “She plays just like my sister did. The sunlit garden.”

They stand, listening.

Tobin watches Seb inhale deeply, his whole face glowing. “I’ve found it. My shining thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These next couple of chapters will take a little longer, as the original episodes focus on side characters. Going to redirect them back towards our central pair, but that takes a bit of extra writing.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
